Leveraging Employees for Social Success

When it comes to driving more social media followers and engagement, most brands take an outward looking approach.

They spent a lot of time, effort and energy trying to come up with ways to drive engagement, conversations and relations using a variety of social media platforms. It’s all about trying to win over potential and existing customers.

Lost in the social shuffle is an important stakeholder group: employees, who have a vested interest in helping a company be more successful – whether it’s more sales and profits or a bigger social media community.

Many companies seem to overlook their employees as a way to build a larger and more vibrant social media presence.

For whatever reason, employees are not seen as top-of-mind social ambassadors. Some employees may not think employees will leverage their personal networks to promote a brand’s social media activities.

In many cases, this is a false assumption because employees are interested in becoming social advocates or champions. If any stakeholder group is motivated to make a brand more successful, employees rank right up there, particularly given the volatile economic conditions.

In a recent blog post, Forrester Research’s Tracy Stokes said leveraging employees is a powerful way for companies to do branding building.

“Make brand building part of how employees do their job and guide them by the light of a clear brand North Star so that your powerful new army marches to the same drumbeat,” she wrote.

One of the keys in using employees as social champions is making it easier for them to get involved.

It not means educating them on best practices but giving them tips and instructions on the type of content you want them to share, as well as how they can and should get engaged with potential and existing customers.

This may involve something as simple as sending content to employees, and then asking them to share it on their social networks.

A good example of a company that makes it easier for brands to share content with employees is Elevate, which lets a brand use their best social content, and send it with employees via a newsletter that features a variety of options to quickly share content on social media.

The bottom line is employees are happy to help a company do better socially. It’s just a matter bringing them into the fold, and giving them ways to quickly and easily get involved.